The present disclosure relates to methods for determining a background shift in an optical measurement signal and an analyzer comprising a background shift detection module.
Optical measurement methods of different kinds are employed in a plurality of automated sample analyzers. For instance, clinical chemistry analyzers can be configured to measure the absorbance of biological samples to determine single or multiple parameters of the biological samples based on this measurement. The optical measurements can be subject to different types of background signals. One technique to reduce the influence of background signals is the bi-chromatic correction technique. This technique can involve taking measurements at two different wavelengths and subtracting these two measurements to remove a constant background signal contained in both measurement signals. However, in some situations the background signal might vary over time, e.g., after a cuvette movement. This can render bi-chromatic correction techniques and other correction techniques less reliable and/or precise.